The Legacy Of The Killing Fields

After surviving the horrors of the Killing Fields, Pete Pin’s family, along with hundreds of thousands of others, risked their lives trekking through Khmer Rouge controlled jungle to reach refugee camps along the Thai border. Resettled in the United States, the legacy of the Cambodian genocide is a generational and cultural discontinuity transcending physical space. Exacerbating the silence is a language barrier. Most young Cambodian Americans cannot speak Khmer, while their parents and grandparents are incapable of speaking English. As Pin writes, “we are the literal manifestation of Pol Pot’s attempt to erase Cambodia’s history and culture.”

Bunthoeun Kann, 29, who was born in a refugee camp, shows his gunshot wounds after a cambodian gang member fired on a crowd of teenagers in the parking lot of a Denny's following their prom in Long Beach.